Dave Bidini: The Easter returns

I am a deeply religious man, which is not to say that I have one. I’m not Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Methodist, Muslim, Jewish or Pagan. Nor am I a Raelian or Snake Charmer or Parrothead, although I once sang “Margaritaville” with Dave Hodge and Mike Keenan, a spiritual moment in its own right. Instead, my faith — my religion — is found in the impossible power and surprise of life, and the ethereal force — manifested however you choose: bearded and sandalled and hanging from a cross or twinkling in the starry depths of the night sky — that produces something from nothing out of nowhere, and, then, zing, like fingerpicks across an autoharp, one’s life and perspective and way of being is forever changed.

I celebrate Easter not by going to church, although the rink has become my church, which is something I’ll explain in a second. I celebrate Easter by playing hockey — something I’ve done for the last 15 years or so — participating in a 30-team tournament (“The Hockey Summit of the Arts”) started by my side, the Morningstars — then carried on by others — as a way of helping wayward artist athletes to celebrate the ethereal and the unreal; triumphing that which, somehow, allows us to do what we do — make art, play hockey — while so many others — untold millions of others — are busy searching for water and fire and food and shelter, struggling day to day, moment to moment. I play for those who cannot, because without luck, without support, without love and without God — those last two things may or may not be the same thing — there would be no game and no tournament. And no refs or penalties, either. But that’s another story.

To me, Easter is about coming back and carrying on. But you don’t have to spend your days in a pew or on a mat to know that faith and belief and religion is about finding the power to rise above one’s circumstances and find the light, no matter what you have to go through to get there. I have a friend — my buddy, Jack — who has seen the worst that we can be. He’s been to hell and back, then back again. While serving as a soldier, he found himself drowning in humanity’s depths. Every abusive evil you can conjure, he wandered into. He suppressed a lot of this for a long time — the darkness of the memories, the pain of the experience — and then, in one horrific lunge, it leaped out of him; ravaging and destroying his family, his livelihood, his friendships, his interests. Those who didn’t know — until recently — what had happened in a life he was loath to burden others with, worried about him. We asked each other: “What’s wrong with Jack? Have you seen his posts? He seems kind of crazy.” And then we found out about the terrible abuse, the assault at the hands of others. For a long time, he was adrift among us, and then, one day, he started coming to the rink; playing and playing; a clarity of mind and calming of nerves finding itself through huffs of breath and pulses of heartblood that sustain him and others like him. On Easter, me and my teammates will be slapping our sticks against the ice and laughing like merry ghouls, grateful that our friend came back and that we were there to greet him. We might eat some chocolate, too; drink some beer. But not at the same time.

Then there’s Karyn Freedman. I play hockey with Karyn every Thursday. Karyn — I can use her real name because her story will soon be known to everyone — is publishing her first book in a few weeks on University of Chicago Press. The book is called One Hour in Paris, which may sound like the next instalment in the Linklater series that documents the romantic tryst between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, but, most assuredly, is not. Subtitled A True Story of Rape and Recovery, it describes a life that — like Jack’s — I had no idea about. Karyn was 22 when it all came down — a brutal rape at knifepoint while travelling across France — and the book follows her from a European courtroom to a trauma centre in Toronto to a rape clinic in Africa. I’ve just finished the first five chapters and they’re brilliant. The story is about a journey — like all great stories are — but it’s also about survival and coming back and trying to be normal, which is another thing that hockey and hockey at Easter and religion does, or is supposed to do. It’s also supposed to make everyone live better and skate harder and love deeper, which is how I want to live, despite the refs or penalties or whatever terrible names I’ll be called by my friends over the weekend. But that’s another story.